


fake popular boys unite

by heejin



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, theyre just a big old mess. individually and together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 08:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11310048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heejin/pseuds/heejin
Summary: sehun and luhan bond over being average and lonely pieces of shit. chaos ensues.





	fake popular boys unite

**Author's Note:**

> its all kinda messy?? and lame. idk. also, the summary is pretty... bad, honestly. n e ways.. hope you like it?? lol  
> p. s also i promise minseok doesnt play the big bad ex or sth ok. pinky promise

Lu Han appears to be experiencing a mid-life crisis at the age of nineteen. Or some kind of late-onset teenage angst. Essentially, just a big old pile of sad that’s been caused by various failures that he is entirely responsible for due to being an absolutely pathetic mess of a human being. And now he’s having a bit of a cry on a garden bench at some absolute randomer’s New Year’s Ever house party. Classic.

 

He’s never been one to make resolutions. As if he’d ever do them if he did. People who say they’re going to lose weight, or start exercising, or write a book, or whatever. No one ever does that shit. Dreams are stupid, anyway. Why get your hopes up for something amazing and unattainable and then live with the crushing weight of disappointment for the whole of your perfectly average life? At the end of the day, being average is the most any of the human populace can hope for. And he’ll fucking live by that. And he’ll be happy. Eventually.

 

“Oh, shit…”

 

A voice sounds to his left. Lu Han looks up, only to see a boy standing just outside the backdoor to the house, his arms outstretched and his body frozen as if trying to camouflage into the brick wall behind him.

 

“Do you want to be alone?” he asks, grinning sheepishly like he’s done something very embarrassing. “You look like you’re having a moment.” With the word ‘moment’, he waggles his fingers, as if casting glitter into the air.

 

Lu Han hastily wipes the tears from his face. _Shit_. His makeup is almost certainly everywhere. He probably looks like a puffy mole.

 

“I’m fine,” Lu Han says, in what he hopes is a convincing tone.

 

“I’m fine,” he repeats back at Lu Han, in an overly posh voice.

 

“Excuse me, I’m not that posh!” Lu Han snaps at him. Who the fuck does this boy think he is?

 

Lu Han looks him up and down. He looks like just another boy like him, on a night out, dressed up for no real reason other than wanting to feel kind of nice for once. He’s wearing quite a nice outfit, actually. Burgundy shirt, loose tie (because he’s probably not that much of a loser), black ti- _fucking_ -ght skinny jeans. Goes very nicely with his skin. Lu Han wonders where he got that shirt. Mind you, he doesn’t know how he’s surviving in December weather with such a thin shirt on and no jacket, but Lu Han guesses he’s sitting here in just a white t-shirt too, so he’s not really one to talk.

 

“Excuse me,” _monsieur_ randomer repeats back at Lu Han, like he’s pretending to be the fucking king. “Darling. I’m not that posh.”

 

Lu Han rolls his eyes and turns away from him. He’s kind of drunk and his mind is too fucking clouded right now and starting an argument would be easy—God knows he has done that before—so best to just ignore. Ignoring people seems to be getting easier and easier with age.

 

“Okay, okay, sorry. That was mean.” The boy wanders over to Lu Han’s bench and sits down next to him, tucking his hands underneath his legs. “You have a great accent. Ten out of ten.”

 

First, how did the man know that Lu Han isn’t Korean? Second, of course he has a great accent. Poor boy didn’t spend two entire years practicing and practicing and practicing his Korean to _not_ have a great accent. Lu Han gives him a look of disdain. _Why is he sitting next to me?_

 

“Dude, you’ve got eyeliner all smudged under your eyes,” he says, looking directly at Lu Han. The light from the house catches on the side of his head—his hair, Lu Han notices, is a mess. Probably not even a hot one. Lots of people like that style nowadays. That looks really weird, though this could probably just be the result of wild partying.

 

“I’m aware,” Lu Han says.

 

“Do you want a makeup wipe?” He yanks a little wipe from his wallet. “I have a few on me.”

 

“Why… do you have makeup wipes?” Lu Han asks. “You’re not even wearing makeup.”

 

“Dude. I have a sister—this rat left the party without me, but it’s whatever—and it’s for, like, absolute emergencies, she said. Probably like this one.” He whips out a makeup wipe and hands it to Lu Han. The older looks at it for a second, and then takes it and starts mopping at his eyes.

 

“Thanks,” Lu Han says.

 

“It’s fine,” he says, and when Lu Han looks at him, he’s smiling, smugly.

 

“What do you want?” Lu Han asks.

 

The boy shrugs and looks away, over the garden. “Just wondered why you’re out here by yourself, crying. It’s pretty dramatic.”

 

“How about you mind your own fucking business?”

 

“Wow.” The boy holds up both his hands. “Sorry, I guess. Want me to go away?”

 

Lu Han looks at him. He looks harmless. Younger than him, probably. Or older? Who fucking knows. He starts swinging his legs—and that’s when Lu Han realizes that he’s tall. Really. Or maybe Lu Han is just really an ant—and maybe this is why his friends call him pocket boy—but that doesn’t change the fact that his own legs aren’t quite long enough to reach the ground.

 

“No, it’s fine,” Lu Han mumbles and looks away again.

 

Someone from inside the house shrieks “four minutes”, meaning that there are only four minutes to go until midnight. God, has this evening gone by that fast? Lu Han feels like he’s barely talked to anyone here. He hasn’t even danced. He has only had four or five drinks, for fuck’s sake. What has he even been doing? Just sitting here, like the fucking miserable wreck he spent his entire teenage years trying to convince himself he is not?

 

“So, what you crying about?” the boy asks.

 

Lu Han resists the urge to snap at him again. It really isn’t his business, but… who gives a fuck. It’s not like he’ll ever see him again, is it?

 

“Just the pile of shit that is my life,” Lu Han says.

 

“What’s shit about it?”

 

“Everything.”

 

He laughs. “Wanna be a bit more specific?”

 

Lu Han stares at him, and then leans back heavily into the bench.

 

“All right,” he says. “So, I’m dropping out of uni’ halfway through my second year, which doesn’t matter because I don’t have any friends there and I would fail my course anyway. None of my friends from home talk to me anymore because they’ve all moved on and have their own new uni’ friends and new lives. I literally don’t have any future prospects because I’m so extraordinarily average at everything and I have no talents or dreams or anything, and to top it all off, I dumped yet another girlfriend last week because, once again, I realized I really can’t bring myself to like them.”

 

The boy leans back in the bench so they’re level with each other. He folds his arms and lets out a heavy sigh.

 

“Fucking hell,” he says. “That’s some stuff.”

 

“Three minutes,” calls someone from inside the house. As if Lu Han gives a shit.

 

“Yeah,” Lu Han agrees, and wipes another tear that’s forming in his eye. God, he doesn’t want to cry anymore.

 

“I don’t have any advice, by the way,” he says. “I’m a bit of an average piece of shit myself.”

 

This actually makes Lu Han chuckle a bit.

 

“Are you?” Lu Han asks.

 

“Oh, yeah. One hundred percent. Like, I’m pretty much failing all of my classes. No chance of getting to uni’. I’m really unpopular, like, I don’t have any real friends. I mean, I have all these people who talk to me, but, like, no one who actually knows me that well. See what I mean?”

 

Surprisingly, Lu Han does actually know what he means.

 

“Yeah,” Lu Han says. “Yeah, definitely. Like, you’ve got this big friendship group, and they all talk to you, but no one actually cares that much about you. Everything’s fine when you’re being funny and likeable and stuff, but… like, no one would give a shit if they saw me like this.”

 

“From afar, everyone thinks you’re popular,” he says, nodding wildly at Lu han. “But, like, in reality, you don’t have any real friends.”

 

“That’s literally it!” Lu Han says.

 

Wow. He’s never met anyone who really got that before. Even his own mum thinks he’s being stupid when he tells her he has no friends.

 

“Two minutes,” shouts the voice.

 

Two minutes until the new year. Hell fucking not.

 

The music blares on from the party, the heavy bass making the floor vibrate all the way through the bench and directly underneath Lu Han.

 

“Sounds like we should be friends,” the boy says, holding eye contact. His hair, dark and soft, moves gently in the wind.

 

Lu Han laughs again. “Should we?”

 

“Yeah, man. Fake Popular Boys Unite.”

 

“Popular boy. Haven’t been one of those for a while.”

 

“Well, you’re popular with one person,” says the boy, and he nudges Lu Han on the shoulder with a fist. “And that’s me.”

 

This actually makes Lu Han snort. “Thanks… I think?”

 

“One minute!”

 

“Your hair is so great, by the way,” he says, looking at Lu Han’s hair. He’s kept it unstyled today and it really needs a cut. “I’ve always wanted to dye my hair a cool color.”

 

“Thanks,” Lu Han says.

 

“Have you had it like that for long, or…?”

 

“Yeah… over three years now, actually.”

 

“Holy shit, that’s so cool. Love the weird blue to the bleached blonde to the faded pink-ish tone. You’re like… Harley Quinn’s unsuccessful try-hard of a brother. You’re Barney Quinn.” He grins.

 

Lu Han groans. “Barney Quinn sounds like the lamest supervillain ever.”

 

“Thirty seconds!”

 

“Nah, I think you’d be great. Dressed all in black and purple, probably. Like a big old eggplant.”

 

“You’re just making it worse.”

 

They both laugh.

 

“Twenty seconds!”

 

The boy swings his legs more rapidly.

 

“Don’t have a midnight kiss, then?” he asks.

 

Lu Han snorts. “Who gives a shit…? I’m not twelve—”

 

“So you don’t, then?”

 

“Why would I be sitting out here alone if I did?”

 

“Wanna be mine?”

 

“Ten seconds!”

 

It takes a few moments for Lu Han to fully understand the implication of the question.

 

“I—” Lu Han finds himself stuttering, suddenly feeling kind of awkward. “Er, is this about what I said earlier? I don’t know if that's… I don’t really like girls, but… ”

 

The stranger shrugs. “I am, but it’s whatever.”

 

There’s a pause. Fireworks have already started going off in far away in the town, and everyone inside the house are shouting the numbers, counting down to the near year, and Lu Han is struck with how little he cares about anything. He doesn’t care about the new year and he doesn’t care about his life, he doesn’t care about what he’s told to this random boy and he doesn’t care about kissing him, or not kissing him, or whatever he does. It doesn’t matter what he does, because he’s still just going to feel nothing.

 

“Alright, then,” he says, with a wobbly smile. “Why not?”

 

The boy grins back. “Why not?”

 

And then, just as the party-goers reach the end of their countdown, he leans in close to Lu Han and it’s different to the other times he’s been this close to anyone. Different from drunken hugs and drunken kisses on foreheads with his ex-girlfriends, different from doing his exes’ makeup and hair, different from food fights and dicks drawn on cheeks with fluorescent paint and improvised belly dances. Their lips meet and it’s not like he hasn’t kissed anyone before, God, he’s kissed a shit ton of people, people who were amazing at it and people who didn’t seem to know how to move their mouth, but it feels new and different to all of that. Maybe it’s the drink. Maybe it’s the way the boy moves his arm over Lu Han’s shoulder and pulls him closer, not like a flirty drunk girl who just wants to get him to bed but like a friend who wants him to feel good about himself. Maybe he’s just imagining all of this.

 

The boy moves his lips so softly against Lu Han’s and he likes him, he likes this, he just lets the moment happen, hoping, praying that something good is happening, that something good is happening to him.

 

/

 

“You know, Sehun, if you’re struggling with any particular topics, you can always come and find me in my classroom at lunchtimes,” says Mrs Lee, in the sweetest old lady voice Sehun has ever heard.

 

He smiles a thin-lipped smile at her. It’s not her fault he’s failing his history class. It’s his fault for being fundamentally unable to retain information in his obviously pea-sized brain.

 

“You’re a bright boy,” she says, nodding sadly across her desk. “You just… you’re just not quite there yet, are you?”

 

 _Not quite there. Summary of my life, am I right?_ Sehun thinks.

 

“I’ll get there,” he says.

 

“I know you will. But if you need any help—”

 

“I’m good, I promise, I’m good.”

 

He gets the fuck out of there.

 

Huh. He has got a D on the essay.

 

That’s pretty good for him.

 

He knows it’s a bit shitty compared to everyone else. He knows it won’t get him into university.

 

But he’s just being himself. And that’s all he can be.

 

Oh Sehun.

 

He skips fifth period and wanders out of school. Of course. He doesn’t have a lesson and no one will notice he’s gone. Well, he’d skip it even if he did have a lesson. He doesn’t think anyone would notice then either.

 

In fact, even if they did notice, he still thinks he’d skip.

 

He truthfully doesn’t give a shit.

 

He’s been gradually caring less and less about anything that he does at school for some time now, but over the last year, there are a few things in particular he’s been coming to terms with.

 

Firstly, his friends probably aren’t actually behaving like friends. They’re just people he hangs out with when it’s convenient. Real friends are people who travel across the country to see each other and stop from eventually killing themselves because they’re having a mental breakdown and their mother is the epitome of evil. Yeah. Long story. It doesn’t matter.

 

Secondly, no one gives a shit about him unless he’s good at academic stuff, which, by the way, he’s not. They just force him into detention, as if being made to do practice papers over and over again is going to help him learn anything.

 

Thirdly, if anyone ever tells him that being a young adult is fun, they’re lying.

 

As he’s walking down the road towards the high street, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out and glances at the screen. It’s another text from Jongin.

 

He puts his phone back in his pocket. He’ll answer it later.

 

Now, he’s pretty sure afternoon drinking is a sign of alcoholism. And he also knows that he hasn’t drank alcohol for almost two years.

 

But sometimes you’ve just got to not give a fuck. _Right? Right._

 

He wanders into the high street and heads towards the first bar he finds. There are a few people here, mostly people out for a casual lunch or a drink with friends, and a fair few old men just sitting and drinking and reading newspapers. Hopefully, there’ll be a free booth he can go and hide in.

 

When he reaches the bar and looks up at the bartender, he nearly turns around and gets the _fuck_ out of here.

 

It’s the boy.

 

That boy. Barney Quinn. From New Year’s Eve.

 

He gives Sehun a thin-lipped smile and says, “What can I get you?”

 

Oh, bloody hell. Even worse. He doesn’t even recognize him.

 

He looks exactly the same. His hair’s still super cute—seriously, how does anyone deal with having hair colored like that _that_ long? He must be balding.

 

He gives Sehun a weird look. _Oh_. He needs to say something.

 

“Er—” _Fucking get it together_. What do people even drink nowadays? He was just on pure vodka, the last time he drank. “Erm, can I have a cider, please?”

 

“Could I possibly see some I.D.?”

 

“Oh, yeah, sure.” It takes an awkward minute for him to get his driving license out of his wallet. He looks at it, and he can see him trying to calculate whether Sehun is actually eighteen. Looks like he’s as bad at mathematics as Sehun is.

 

When he’s done, he nods and hands it back.

 

“Which cider?” he asks.

 

 _Fuck_. He has made a terrible mistake. He doesn’t know the names of any ciders.

 

“Whatever’s… cheapest?” He offers.

 

He chuckles. “Half-pint of Strongbow, then.”

 

Sehun pays, and then the boy picks up a glass and moves away towards the tap of Strongbow.

 

The sensible and normal thing to do here would be to just not say anything. Just get his drink and go away.

 

Unfortunately, he’s never been known to be sensible or normal, so there’s that idea out the window.

 

“I think we’ve met before,” Sehun says, when Barney Quinn plonks his drink down in front of him.

 

He looks up at Sehun in alarm, then frowns at him, squinting. “Have we?”

 

“Yep. New Year’s Eve?”

 

His expression changes from confusion, then to sudden realization, and then to vague embarrassment. It’s kind of funny.

 

“Oh, right,” he says. “Sorry… Your hair is different now.”

 

Of course. Sehun dyed his hair silver a few weeks back. He probably looks like a completely different person.

 

He starts rearranging the glasses behind the bar.

 

Then he says, “I didn’t realize how young you were.”

 

“I’m… eighteen. You literally just checked my license.”

 

“Yeah, well, I’m twenty.”

 

“That’s not that much older.”

 

“You’re still at school.”

 

What’s he on about? Sehun laughs at him. “Have you never gotten off with someone younger than you?”

 

He snorts. “Well, no, to be honest.”

 

“Well, sorry for not giving you a full and complete bio beforehand.” Sehun waggles his fingers in a showbiz-like fashion. “Oh Sehun. Male. Eighteen. Seoul, Korea.”

 

“Sehun.” He snorts again. Sehun’s name sounds hilarious in his posh accent. “That sounds funny. Don’t ask me why.”

 

“And what’s your name?”

 

He puts down the glasses and smiles at him, amusedly. “Lu Han.”

 

“Lu Han. Knew you weren’t from here. Cute accent.”

 

 “…Do I sound that different?”

 

“Maybe.” Sehun laughs, slightly.

 

There’s a pause. Lu Han leans forward and rests his chin on his hand.

 

He’s pretty. Like, really pretty, actually. He’s got that classic beautiful mouth, big-eye look. Cute makeup. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He seems cool, too, from the very few things that Sehun knows about him. The colored hair. The fact that he’s working here, at a dingy bar, in the middle of the day. All that stuff he was talking about on New Year’s Eve—yeah, Sehun remembers. He knows he’s a bit like him, in some ways, anyway.

 

 “Well, sorry for making out with you,” Sehun says. “It was kind of rude.”

 

Lu Han laughs. All his laughs sound vaguely sarcastic. “It wasn’t that bad.”

 

 “No?”

 

 “No.” He shrugs. “It was nice to have someone to talk to. I wasn’t in the best mood at the time. And going into the new year alone would have been really sad.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He doesn’t like being alone. Like Sehun.

 

He nods at the full glass of Strongbow in front of Sehun. “So you’re drinking that?”

 

Sehun looks at it too. It suddenly looks a lot less appealing than it had been when he first came in here.

 

“I haven’t had alcohol for, like, two years,” he says, with a laugh.

 

Lu Han frowns. “What? Why?”

 

“Er… I got a bit… insane when I was, like, sixteen. Went a bit too far into the party scene. Swore off alcohol ever since.”

 

“Oh.” He seems to sense he’s entering deep territory. “Why did you order it then?”

 

“I don’t know! I don’t know. I just felt like it.”

 

“Yeah, well, I feel like walking out of here and grabbing some chicken from KFC, but I don’t just do it, do I?”

 

Sehun watches in amazement as Lu Han glances from left to right, and seeing that the other bartenders are busy, grabs Sehun’s drink and literally downs it in one go. He’s crazy—Sehun swears he’s crazy.

 

Once he’s done, he slams the empty glass down in front of Sehun and wipes his mouth.

 

“Holy fucking shit,” Sehun says.

 

The bartender tucks a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “That’s my party trick.”

 

“That’s fucking amazing.”

 

“Thanks for the free drink.” He smirks at Sehun. “And you should stay alcohol-free for as long as you can. It just makes things worse.”

 

“Yeah…”

 

Lu Han walks away before Sehun can say anything else because another customer has already approached the bar.

 

And Sehun is just sitting there with an empty glass and an open mouth.

 

When he returns, the first thing Sehun finds to say is, “We need to be friends.”

 

Lu Han raises his eyebrows. “Do we, now?”

 

“If you want to.”

 

He grabs one of the taps and pours Sehun a glass of lemonade.

 

“I don’t mind,” he says.

 

/

 

The boy Lu Han made out with on New Year’s Eve is called Sehun and he’s been talking to him at work for at least two hours.

 

As it turns out, he’s actually a fairly nice person.

 

He might have been a nice person on New Year’s Eve as well, but Lu Han doesn’t really remember what they talked about. He remembers the kiss, though.

 

First kiss with a boy.

 

Well, it was bound to happen at some point, knowing himself.

 

He didn’t recognize him at first because he’s dyed his hair silver. It looks excellent. And he does look a bit younger in his school clothes—he’s wearing an uniform, yellow and black with little bits of white, so he must go to a seriously cool school.

 

He learns all the basics about Sehun’s life throughout the rest of his shift. He’s an extreme under-achiever, which is quite surprising, because he really doesn’t seem unintelligent. He’s not going to university, which is kind of nice to hear, since Lu Han is a university drop-out himself. He’s got a couple of friends—but no one he thinks he’s very close to. And he used to be a party boy. House parties, clubbing with fake I.D.s, drinking so much that he had to have his stomach pumped twice? He mumbles something about probably having taken LSD at some point but he isn’t actually sure, and one day he was so drunk and high at an old friend’s birthday party that he nearly fell off the infamous Banpo Bridge. That’s when he called it quits.

 

Lu Han tells him all about how he came to leave university—how he’d been failing, and hating it, and he couldn’t deal with being there anymore—and how he’s living with one of the first friends he’s made here, doing nothing except this shitty job. He tells Sehun how his friends have all moved on, really, even Minseok, who he used to think was his best friend for fucking ever, but he thinks that was his fault. He almost starts telling him about how his future and life is so dull that sometimes he doesn’t even want to get out of bed, but then he checks himself, because getting that deep would be kind of awkward. He does tell him that he used to be a party boy too (“my wild, wild party babe” Minseok used to say)—though, not quite at LSD level—but that all came to a close after one horrible Halloween Week, in which there was such a high risk of sexual assault that he left at eleven P.M on the first night and refused to go out again for the rest of the week.

 

Before he knew it, his shift ends, and they’ve been talking for a good three or four hours.

 

When they step outside, it’s starting to get dark.

 

“I really don’t want to go home,” says Sehun. He laughs and looks at Lu Han.

 

“Neither do I,” Lu Han admits. Going home would mean going back to his boring life. He hasn’t spoken to someone so much for months, maybe _even_ years.

 

“We should go out,” he says, and for a moment Lu Han thinks he might be asking him out, but then he says, “We should go out for the night. A homage to our younger days.”

 

“But… why would we do that if we can’t drink?” Lu Han asks, confused. “I have to drive home later.”

 

“Because you get to hang out with me,” Sehun says, smiling cheekily. “And I’m, uh, really great.”

 

Lu Han laughs, momentarily not knowing how to reply. He glances at his phone. “Well, I guess it’s only seven o’clock.”

 

“Perfect. We start here.” He points at the pub over the road. “About nine, we move to that one.”

 

“That one?” Lu Han raises his eyebrows. “Bit upmarket, isn’t it?”

 

“You never went here? But you look at least ten times richer than me!”

 

“I don’t go anywhere where the cocktails are fucking sixteen thousands wons.”

 

“Alright, alright, then we’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere where they have good music.”

 

Lu Han nods approvingly.

 

“And then…” Sehun steps forward into the high street road and points down to the right. “Here.”

 

That particular club, Lu Han recognizes, is the biggest nightclub in town. He’s been there probably more times since he arrived in Korea than he’s ever been to his own grandparents’ house.

 

It’s a disgusting, sticky, dark hellhole of a club. The toilets here are truly nightmare-worthy.

 

Sehun quickly picks up on Lu Han’s look of disgust. He skips up to him. “Come on. Barely anyone goes there anymore anyway.”

 

Lu Han sighs. “Fine. But if any gross cougars even approach me, I’m leaving.”

 

“Honestly, same.” Sehun claps his hands together, smiling. “Alright! We’re okay?”

 

Lu Han glances down at what he’s wearing—his black working shirt and black skinny jeans. Not his best clubbing outfit, but he’s seen and probably even worn much worse.

 

He looks at Sehun. He’s smiling wide. He seems so excited.

 

“We’re okay,” he says.

 

Their couple of hours at the first bar passes quickly and they both make it through a huge bowl of chips and a huge bowl of nachos. Sehun, Lu Han notices, is extremely easy to talk to. He picks up on lulls in the conversation without any hesitation, but he also actually listens to Lu Han when he’s talking, instead of just smiling and nodding and just overall simply putting up with him. It feels weird to be sitting in such a place totally sober, only drinking diabolo beverages, and it almost makes him feel nervous. Or maybe he’s nervous for other reasons.

 

One way or another, they somehow manage to run over their schedule and don’t get to the nightclub until about ten, and the music is already so loud that them talking to each other becomes impossible. It doesn’t really matter, Lu Han concludes. They’re playing a T-Ara song, which apparently Sehun loves, because as soon as they get inside, he sticks his hands in the air and skips into the crowd of people, who are all dancing, bobbing up and down, middle-aged women and groups of boys and kids only just turned eighteen. Lu Han hoists his bag onto his back and follows him, grinning. He hasn’t done this for so long.

 

The music is so, so good. Drowns everything out. Lu Han recognizes a few tracks to be Martin Garrix’s and some of Kendrick Lamar’s older tunes. There’s only him and Sehun and the flashing lights, changing his skin from red to green to purple to silver. Sehun grabs Lu Han’s hands and holds them up in the air as they jump up and down. People standing around send him approving nods, as if they can feel how happy he is, they can feel how excited and joyous and good he is, all understanding why people like them might end up in a high street bar on a weekday night, all joined together in their dysfunction. He can’t stop smiling. People like them get to feel joy too, sometimes.

 

And then, yet another place to feel good at. It was only half-full when they got there, as Sehun promised. Lu Han’s ears are still ringing, but he catches Sehun saying, “Bro, I am sweating one out,” which makes Lu Han laugh, and says, “This is my exercise for the month,” and then he looks at him and says, “This is my favorite day of the month so far,” and Lu Han looks at him and says, “Same.”

 

They dance some more until the club gets so crowded that they can just dissolve into the bodies and the bass vibrating under their feet.

 

“Hey, you look like a hot mess,” says Sehun, laughing. They’re heading to the car park now, finally too tired to dance anymore.

 

Lu Han pats his head tentatively. He can feel his fringe sticking to his forehead.

 

“The sign of a good night,” Lu Han says, nodding.

 

“True.”

 

“I can’t believe I had a good night out without alcohol.”

 

“See? You should become alcohol-free, like me.”

 

“Oh god, no way. I don’t know how you do it.”

 

“Well…” Sehun nods. “Nearly falling off the country’s most well-known bridge to your watery doom has a way of changing your mind about some stuff.”

 

They both laugh and turn the corner off the high street, walking down some stone steps towards the car park. The yellowish light of the surrounding streetlamps turns Sehun’s hair gold. All is silent bar the whoosh of traffic in the distance, and screaming all the way from the fair two streets away, as people get thrown and shaken around in various crazy rides.

 

“We should do this again sometime,” says Sehun.

 

“Yeah, definitely.”

 

“Or, like, other stuff. Eating. Cinema.”

 

“Yeah!”

 

Lu Han glances to one side. He genuinely does want to hang out with him again. Quite a lot.

 

He eventually ends up feeling Lu Han’s unintentionally insistent gaze and turns his head towards him. They start to talk a little slower.

 

“What?” he asks, smiling.

 

Lu Han shakes his head and looks away. “Nothing.”

 

He stops walking entirely and says, “Lu Han.”

 

Lu Han stops a couple of paces ahead and turns back to him. “What?”

 

Then Sehun steps forward and kisses Lu Han.

 

It’s so unexpected that he just freezes. It’s not like back on New Year’s Eve, where they just sort of mutually agreed to make out, just for fun. This feels more serious, somehow, even though the kiss isn’t as deep and the way he puts his hand on Lu Han’s arm is much gentler.

 

It scares Lu Han.

 

He’s scared.

 

When Sehun pulls back after only a brief moment, Lu Han can’t hide the fear from his face. His own expression drops.

 

“Shit,” he says, “sorry, I just—I thought—”

 

Has he only been hanging out with Lu Han the entire evening because he wants to date him?

 

Just like all the boys his ex-girlfriend, Joohyun, warned her other friends about, really. He remembers all her words clearly. (“That’s why I don’t really like being friends with boys. You are nice to them and that means they think they can get with you.” Then she proceeded to turn her head towards her boyfriend (spoiler: an uninterested fifteen-year-old Lu Han) to kiss him deeply, comforting him about the fact that he was different. She said something about him being the one, too, Lu Han thinks, but he doesn’t really want to remember.)

 

But Lu Han is not gay. He’s had girlfriends. He’s had literally nine different girlfriends. He’s had sex with girls multiple times.

 

Sehun starts to babble. “S-sorry—I—I don’t think before I do shit like that… I just do stuff without thinking, I’m so sorry, I—”

 

Lu Han guesses he didn’t really want to be friends. He just wanted to date him, or kiss him, or God knows what else. Just like Joohyun’s boys. He simply forces himself to appreciate how Sehun still had the decency to not get him drunk before doing so.

 

Was it too much to think he might actually have made a good friend?

 

He guesses so.

 

“I thought… you wanted to be friends…” Lu Han mumbles, not able to meet his eyes.  He frowns.

 

“Of course I do!”

 

Lu Han shakes his head. That’s what they all say—he’s even said that himself, before. He just wants to be friends, and then he expects girls to get with him. He’s used to this. He really, really doesn’t fall for this shit.

 

“I’m gonna go,” Lu Han says, and walks past Sehun without looking at him, starts walking so fast that he practically jogs down the rest of the steps and into the car park, ignoring the way Sehun calls his name.

 

Too much. He expected too much. He should have learnt by now. He’s just a fucking party boy. People want to fuck him, or they just put up with him, or both. He doesn’t get to have real friends. He doesn’t get to make that special connection with someone who genuinely cares about him, not like nice, good people do. Not like Minseok did.

 

/

 

Heejin, Sehun’s sister, is doing school work at the kitchen table when he slinks past her at one P.M to get some breakfast. She gives him a disapproving look, which immediately annoys Sehun. Not his fault that she’s the achiever of the family. Not his fault he went to bed at four A.M last night because he watched the entire first season of Parks And Recreation.

 

Okay, maybe that last one was slightly his fault.

 

“Is something up?” Heejin asks, swiveling round in her chair to look at Sehun.

 

Normally, Heejin would be one of the first people to find out the intimate details of Sehun’s personal life. She’s got the brains, Sehun’s got the drama. It works just fine.

 

However, he doesn’t really want to get into what’s been happening over the past few weeks right now with anyone.

 

There’s really no casual way to suddenly come out of the closet and confess you have just broken up with your first boyfriend.

 

Not that Jongin and him ever really classified themselves as boyfriends.

 

He never seemed like he wanted that. Which Sehun went along with. Because he’s a big fucking idiot. A dumb dumb.

 

“I’m hungry, that’s what’s up,” Sehun says, swinging the cereal cupboard open. Heejin turns away back to her physics equations or whatever she’s doing.

 

All in all, Jongin and him went wrong because he didn’t think it was serious, whereas it was obviously serious for Sehun, because he was the first boy he’d ever really gone out with. Plus, Sehun liked him. They started talking after Jongin said he could help Sehun work out what to do after school. They quickly stopped talking about that and started talking about other things. Then they stopped talking very much and started doing other things instead.

 

They got together back a few months later, after having been texting for ages. They lasted almost three months before Jongin started messaging Sehun less and seemed less interested when they met up.

 

He got bored.

 

Sehun wishes it hadn’t made him sad, but it did.

 

Anyway, that was a month ago, and he’s dealt with it. Plus, he’s out of school.

 

And he has no idea what he’s doing with his life.

 

His mother set him up with an interview for an admin job at the local council. It’s only a temporary thing, but they just need someone to file stuff and write emails and whatever else you do in offices. Sounds like it’s something he can do, despite the horrendous A-Level results he received last week.

 

He puts on one of his school suits and gets there in good time. He even dyed his hair black last night specially. At least if he got a job, his family will get off his back.

 

He imagines being Heejin. Studying physics at a top university with four years of advance. Such a wild, wild thought.

 

The council offices are in the next town over. About a fifteen minute drive. He parks in a theater car park and finds his way there using Google Maps. The building is super old and looks really, really miserable.

 

It’s just a temporary job. It’s not forever.

 

He heads inside and tells the receptionist his name. He tells Sehun to sit down on one of the chairs in the corner of the room, where there are a few other interviewees waiting.

 

When he looks over to them, he spots him immediately.

 

Lu Han.

 

It takes Lu Han a moment to realize it’s him, and Sehun is honestly surprised he recognized Lu Han anyway.

 

The colored hair is gone. He’s dyed it brown and cut it.

 

It looks weird on him.

 

He still looks pretty, obviously, but it doesn’t seem to suit him.

 

His expression is unreadable.

 

Is he still angry? Oh, god. He probably never wanted to see Sehun again.

 

“Hi,” Lu Han says, sitting up in his seat.

 

Sehun sits down cautiously next to him. “Hi.”

 

They’re immediately interrupted by a voice calling out, “Lu Han?”

 

“Good luck,” Sehun says as he stands up.

 

He smiles down at Sehun. Just as lovely as he remembers it. “Thanks.”

 

/

 

After his own interview has finished, he finds him sitting on a low brick wall outside the building, sipping on some cheap strawberry milk.

 

Is he waiting for him?

 

“Lu Han,” Sehun calls out to him as he approaches.

 

He twists round to look at Sehun, his expression brightening. “Hey.”

 

Sehun sits down on the brick wall next to him. Should he start by apologizing again? He was totally right to be angry at him. Sehun was angry at himself.

 

He looks different. Not just the hair. He looks smaller. Maybe it’s just the way he’s hunching his shoulders.

 

“You—you dyed your hair,” Sehun tries.

 

Lu Han snorts. “How very well observed.”

 

“No, I mean… you had it colored for so long before that.”

 

“Yeah, well. Gotta grow up at some point, haven’t you?”

 

Lu Han sounds bitter. Sad, even.

 

“I preferred it colorful,” Sehun says.

 

He snorts again. “Oh great, thanks.”

 

“You still look really nice. Colorful was more you, though.”

 

He looks away. “Yeah.”

 

Sehun needs to just say he’s sorry. Then maybe walk away. He doesn’t think there’s any chance they’re going to be friends again. He’s a straight boy, though Sehun vaguely remembers something he’s said that makes him doubt that, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not openly homophobic, but still freaks out when presented with gay people.

 

Sehun is about to speak but he gets there first, the sun peeking out from behind a cloud and shining down on one side of his face.

 

“I missed you,” he says.

 

In the sunlight, Sehun can kind of see traces of blue beneath the brown hair dye.

 

Sehun swallows. “Did you?”

 

He chuckles and looks away. “Maybe I’m just starved for attention.”

 

What does that mean? What does Sehun say?

 

“I did the wrong thing,” he continues. “On our night out.”

 

What’s he referring to? He thinks he was wrong to be friends with Sehun? Or he was wrong to… turn him down?

 

“Okay, look.” He sighs. “I’m going to sound very much like a prude or whatever, but… I don’t trust people who want to date me, or fuck me, or whatever, by being my friend first. Pretty much every girl I’ve been with has done that to me. Pretended to be my friend just so they could get something from me. Most of them just did so because they had a thing for foreigner, but that’s—that’s out of context.” He shoots a quick glance at Sehun, then looks away again. “But I don’t think you were doing that. You’re not… manipulative. Like they were.”

 

_Oh, shit._

 

He thought Sehun was just hanging out with him because he wanted to fuck him.

 

“I just jumped to a conclusion,” he says, as if telling himself off. “Because no one that’s ever liked me in that way has ever actually cared about my feelings.”

 

“I care about your feelings,” Sehun says, his voice quietening.

 

Lu Han smiles at him. “Where’ve you been for the past five months, then?”

 

“I thought… you probably wouldn’t want to talk to me again—”

 

“Well, yeah. I didn’t for a while.” He shrugs. “Then I realized that I’m a fucking idiot. Surprise, surprise.”

 

What is happening? What’s he saying? Where _the fuck_ is this going?

 

“Are you gay?” Lu Han asks quietly.

 

Sehun fiddles with his sleeves. “Well… yeah. I mentioned that, before.”

 

“Sorry for being a dick back then,” he says.

 

He’s apologizing now? That should be Sehun.

 

Sehun starts to say “I’m sorry for—” but Lu Han interrupts him halfway through by leaning towards him and kissing him gently on the mouth. So, so gentle. Sehun could settle for that. He’s so surprised he nearly starts laughing.

 

When Lu Han moves back, and Sehun is just sitting there, open-mouthed, he smiles, sun shining down on him like he’s a heavenly apparition, and says, “That’s payback.”

 

/

 

Neither of them gets the job.

 

They hang out every day for a full week. They go to the cinema (they both like horror movies), they go shopping (neither of them buys anything because they’re really, really poor), they take Lu Han’s dog for a few walks. On the final day, Lu Han visits Sehun at his home, as the rest of his family have gone on holiday. Sehun decided not to go with them, claiming that he needed this time to look for a job. In reality, he just wanted to get the fuck away from them and their expectations for a while.

 

Lu Han and him order a pizza and watch three episodes of Running Man, though they stop watching properly halfway through as they’ve got too much to talk to each other about.

 

That’s one of the things Sehun likes about them. They can’t stop talking to each other.

 

Another thing he likes about them is that they don’t need to drink to have fun with each other.

 

When he was younger, the only way he could have fun with other people was to drink.

 

Eventually, the TV goes off, and they’re just snuggled in blankets on the sofa, talking in lowered voices.

 

“It’s weird that we met,” Lu Han says, at some point.

 

“Why?”

 

“I feel like you’re me from the past.”

 

Sehun grins. “But I’m way less grouchy than you.”

 

He elbows Sehun in the side and they both laugh.

 

Then he says, a little quieter. “Please don’t become like me.”

 

They hug, and don’t let go.

 

It’s Lu Han who leans in for the first kiss.

 

This one feels like a real first kiss. Because they’re both ready for it. They both want it. Neither of them are trying to impress or trying to be romantic. It just feels right.

 

He pulls Sehun in with all of his limbs, fingertips brushing so softly against his arms, then his neck, then his cheeks. He stops after a moment and just laughs and says, “This is funny,” which completely throws Sehun off for a moment before he kisses him again, harder, more urgent. Sehun breaks them apart soon after, not so much worried as totally confused that he even wants to do this, and asks, “Is this—are you sure this is okay?” to which Lu Han snorts and says, “I would say so if it wasn’t.”

 

And then they’re kissing more.

 

Hands drift from shoulders and arms to waists and legs. Sehun starts laughing because he very quickly gets pins and needles in his left leg, so they move around and he ends up sitting on Lu Han’s lap, but then his hair gets in his eyes, which makes him laugh, so he quickly ties Sehun’s hair up with a spare hairband he had on his wrist into a tiny bun on the top of his head, which makes Lu Han laugh even more, especially while Sehun sits there pulling faces and asking him whether he finds him attractive.

 

Eventually, the sofa feels too small and neither of them show any signs of wanting to stop, so Sehun says, “We could go upstairs, if you want?”

 

Lu Han raises his eyebrows. “Are you literally asking me to have sex with you?”

 

“No! It just might be comfier, and—like, I—you wouldn’t want to, right?”

 

To Sehun’s amazement, he shrugs. “I’d be up for it.”

 

Sehun’s mouth feels very dry all of a sudden. “You mean… sex?”

 

Lu Han produces a fake, exaggerated gasp. “Sex? Shock horror! What will mother say? A young man of but twenty years old, having sex? What a disgrace.”

 

Sehun’s too busy both laughing and internally combusting to think of a response.

 

“Don’t know what I’m doing, though,” he says. “With girls it’s all just a bit…” He raises his hands, poking one finger through a circle he makes with the opposite thumb and forefinger. “You know. Bit straightforward.”

 

“More like boring,” Sehun says.

 

“…True.”

 

“Have you never even watched gay porn?”

 

Lu Han wrinkles his nose. “No. Well, I tried watching straight porn, once, but it was just very violent and I didn’t like it.”

 

“Wow. You’re way more vanilla and sensitive than you appear.”

 

He grins and glances off to the side. “Leave me alone.”

 

He’s kind of adorable when he’s a bit embarrassed.

 

Sehun kisses him on the cheek. He turns to him and kisses him on the mouth.

 

“Are we going upstairs, then?” Lu Han asks.

 

It takes them about ten minutes to get upstairs because they keep stopping to press each other and kiss against walls. Sehun keeps wondering whether they’re going too fast, but they both want it, and it’s not like either of them haven’t had sex before, so he dispels his worries and tries to remember everything he’s learnt about having sex with boys.

 

He really, really doesn’t want to get this wrong.

 

He doesn’t want Lu Han to regret it.

 

It feels a little awkward, but not awkward enough to make either of them want to stop.

 

Lu Han freezes when they get inside Sehun’s bedroom, which immediately worries him that he doesn’t want this or he’s pressured him into doing something he doesn’t want to do but then he says, “How the fuck is your bedroom this tidy?”

 

“I… tidy it? Sometimes?”

 

“This is unreal.” He wanders around the room, holding out his arms as if measuring the space around him. “I thought you’d be messy. Like me.”

 

“Well… we’re not exactly the same person.”

 

“Yes, apparently you still have some remnants of your life together.”

 

Sehun stays quite still near the doorway, not quite sure where to take things from here. He’s never this nervous when he has sex with people.

 

Maybe it’s because he’s having sex with someone he actually likes, this time.

 

Lu Han turns round to face Sehun, and then in one quick swoosh, takes his t-shirt off. He gestures at Sehun to come towards him with a nod of his head. “Come on, boy. I don’t have all day. I’m a very busy man.”

 

Sehun grins and steps towards him.

 

Once they get on the bed, Sehun is so nervous that he can hear his heart pounding in his ears. Lu Han pulls his top off and Sehun rolls over to shuffle his pants down, then looks back at him to find him staying very still, just kind of staring at Sehun. When he realizes Sehun has seen him staring, he says, “Sorry! Sorry, I’m being a nervous pervert,” and laughs shakily.

 

“We still don’t have to do this right now if you don’t want to—”

 

“I _definitely_ want to,” he says, and seems to get a sudden surge of boldness, takes his jeans off, and kisses Sehun. “I actually do really like you,” he says, a little quieter.

 

“Do you?”

 

“I just… this is kind of new territory for me.”

 

“That’s okay.”

 

“Ugh,” he says, loudly. “I hate being serious. I hate being a fucking grown-up.”

 

Sehun grins. “Shall we just have sex and talk about it later?”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

Maybe that’s unwise. But that’s who they are, after all.

 

They kiss, rolling over so that Lu Han is balanced above Sehun and his hair spills over his pillows. They take each other’s underwear off, though both of them are struggling to take anything seriously and Lu Han keeps making ‘ _Careless Whisper_ ’ saxophone noises just to make Sehun laugh. When Sehun’s hands and his kisses wander elsewhere, he grows quieter, but every time he smiles at Sehun, he feels like his life is a little bit better. When he makes other sounds, Sehun feels so desperate for this to go on for the rest of his life. When he reaches out to kiss his lips again, Lu Han clings onto him, not in that violent way that he’s always hated, but feeling that he really does want to be here with Sehun right now more than he wants to be anywhere else in the world.

 

When he finds out how extremely ticklish Lu Han is, that descends into a hysterical tickle fight for at least five minutes. When they get to the things that Sehun’s never done before, settling with Lu Han sitting on top, holding each other’s hands, they’re both much more relaxed, and keep joking and laughing, Lu Han warning Sehun that he’s going to rate what happens next out of ten, Sehun suggesting that he draws up a mark scheme. Things never really quite get totally serious, and there’s never that silence that he’s used to during sex, the wait for it to be over while the other person does their thing. This is so much better because God, it’s fun.

 

For a while they just become desperate touches, searching for something more than what they have.

 

“I really wish we’d saved some pizza for after this,” says Lu Han, who has wrapped himself right up to his chin in Sehun’s duvet after complaining that Sehun’s room is the temperature of a fridge.

 

“I think we have ice cream in the freezer.”

 

“No. I need carbs. Good, reliable carbs.”

 

“Sounds like you need more exercise.”

 

Lu Han pokes Sehun on the forehead and they both laugh.

 

They get dressed and go downstairs so Sehun can cook some sausage rolls. As they’re munching away at the kitchen table, chatting, Lu Han asks, “Have you had sex with a boy before, then?”

 

Sehun swallows. “Yeah. Just one, though.”

 

“Who was he?”

 

Sehun raises his hand to his mouth in faux-shock. “What’s this? Jealousy?”

 

Lu Han throws a sausage roll at him, which Sehun just manages to duck in time. “No! I’m just curious.”

 

“Well, I met him a few months back through some other friends. He lives in Suncheon, but we messaged a lot, and… I don’t know. One thing led to another, I guess. He wanted to know if he liked all that… being gay thing.”

 

Lu Han is munching slowly. “Only a few months ago?”

 

“Yeah… It was kind of sudden. And over very quickly. I think he wanted to be with someone a bit more experienced.”

 

Lu Han raises his eyebrows. “That’s a terrible reason to break up with someone.”

 

“He wasn’t really into me very much, to be honest.”

 

“He sounds more and more awful by the second.”

 

There’s a comfortable pause.

 

Then Lu Han says, “I… I’m not in the rebound business… If that’s…?”

 

“What? No!”

 

He nods, believing Sehun. “Okay.”

 

“I would literally go out with you,” Sehun says, his mouth completely full of pastry. “I mean, if you want to.”

 

Lu Han stays silent for a moment.

 

“Well… I just… I think I need a bit more time to, er, sort myself out, first,” he says.

 

Sehun sits up a little. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean… just sort out my life. Sort out what’s going in my head. Try to actually… get my life in order before, you know. Going out with anyone.”

 

_What?_

 

“You know we literally just had sex, right?” Sehun says.

 

“Oh, no, what? I totally didn’t notice,” he says, but it doesn’t make Sehun laugh.

 

“You don’t want to go out with me?” Sehun asks.

 

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just—”

 

This is Jongin all over again.

 

Using him for sex.

 

Which, of course, Sehun always falls for. He always thinks the best is going to happen, and people make him fall for them, and then they turn around and say they don’t want him. Say that he misunderstood.

 

Once again, he’s wrong. Why is he always wrong?

 

“Why would you—why would we do this if you don’t want to go out?”

 

Lu Han suddenly seems a bit annoyed. “Well, let’s be real, we never specified that before we did it, and I don’t exactly owe you anything, do I?”

 

The words cut into Sehun like a fucking knife.

 

“But… I thought you’d want to,” Sehun says. “You said you liked me.”

 

“I do, I—well, I’m not sure, I just need time—”

 

“You’re not sure?” Sehun slumps back into his seat. “You just used me, then.”

 

“No? No! Look, my life is a fucking mess, I need time to sort it out—”

 

“Yeah, well, so is mine!” Sehun snaps.

 

“Not really, though,” says Lu Han. “You’re me before my fucking downfall. You’ve got time to make your life actually decent. I’ve already fucked mine all up.”

 

“I guess you don’t understand me half as much as I thought you did,” Sehun says.

 

“Well… likewise,” says Lu Han.

 

They sit there in silence for a moment.

 

“I guess I’ll leave,” says Lu Han. He stands up.

 

“No, hang on—”

 

He walks towards the kitchen door. “I’ll text you later.”

 

“Wait, we—we can sort this out—”

 

He leaves the room and speaks back to Sehun through the hallway. “No,  _I_  need to sort  _myself_  out. That’s what I’ve been saying. But obviously, you don’t care.”

 

Sehun doesn’t know how to respond, and the next thing he hears is the door opening and then slamming shut.

 

/

 

This is the first wedding he’s been to since he was six years old.

 

This is his twenties, he supposes. The beginning of a long period of watching other people getting married and start families, people asking him where he’s working and whether he’s seeing anyone and  _do you plan to move out any time soon_  and  _do you think having children is on the horizon for you, Lu Han?_   _Huh, no, thank you, auntie, I’m perfectly happy being single and degree-less right now and the last thing on my mind is getting a girlfriend in order to make her push a tiny human out of her vagina._

 

“You look like you want to murder them,” says a voice from his right. He turns to look.

 

Minseok has returned to their table, holding two glasses of champagne. He hands one to Lu Han, sits down beside him, and looks towards what he’s been staring—the married couple, dancing in the middle of the hall.

 

“I mean, that doesn’t sound much like a bad idea,” Minseok says, in that completely expressionless, deadpan way he has of making dark jokes like that. “I would literally rather be watching a Nicholas Sparks movie right now.”

 

“Yikes,” Lu Han says. “That’s a bold statement, there.”

 

“Yeah. What’s the Miley Cyrus one?”

 

“The Last Song?”

 

“That one. Would rather be watching Miley Cyrus trying to be dramatic and sad right now than sitting here, watching this.”

 

Lu Han chuckles. He doesn’t even know how they ended up invited to this thing. The wife is some girl from the year below them at school, and this wedding is so huge that apparently they ended up inviting literally everyone from her year group, the year group below her, and their year group.

 

Who the fuck gets married at nineteen, anyway?

 

He’ll be twenty-one so soon. The thought of him getting married at this age is absolutely hysterical.

 

Kim Minseok and him started talking to each other again sometime in the past few months. He’s not sure exactly how it happened. But the strings of their friendship started coming back to them, and now here they are, complaining about people being in love. It used to just be Minseok who had this cynical outlook on life. In many ways, he thinks he’s more like him now than he used to be.

 

Lu Han was a bit of a shit when he was at school.

 

He also has a job now. It’s nothing super exciting—it’s just an assistant job at a marketing firm a couple of towns over—but it’s full-time, the pay is good, and it’s so much better than cleaning toilets at that crusty bar.

 

Minseok glances at his phone and sighs.

 

“Jiyeon’s got lost,” he says.

 

“How the fuck did she do that?”

 

“No idea. She was trying to find the bathroom. She probably decided to do some exploring.” He stands up. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

 

“Okay,” Lu Han nods.

 

Minseok wanders out of the hall, leaving Lu Han alone at their table.

 

Funny how life works out, isn’t it?

 

He glances around the crowd. He keeps spotting people he vaguely remember from school, but can’t remember their names. Ghost of his past. He half wishes he could just move past all of this and start afresh, but that’s not the way life works, is it?

 

“Why do I always find you at parties?”

 

A familiar voice sounds from behind him, causing Lu Han to spin round.

 

A boy with silver hair is standing there, wearing a purple suit and holding a full glass of water.

 

It takes a moment for Lu Han to collect his thoughts and say something. “What—why are you here?”

 

“I mean, I didn’t sneak in here. I was invited,” says Sehun, sitting down on a chair opposite to Lu Han. “The husband went to my school.” He takes a sip of water.

 

They haven’t seen each other since that week.

 

Lu Han never texted him.

 

Why?

 

He doesn’t know.

 

Was he embarrassed?

 

Scared?

 

Every time he tried to think of what to say, he’d get too nervous and talk himself out of it. The longer the time got, the more convinced he became that Sehun would just forget him anyway. Then, suddenly, months had passed.

 

“You’re looking at me like I’m the actual worst person in the world,” says Sehun, chuckling sadly.

 

“You can’t read people’s expressions.”

 

“Okay. Well, it was nice to see you, but I’m leaving now anyway, so I’m just going to go.” He stands up. “And I’m glad your hair is like that again.”

 

He walks away.

 

Lu Han downs his champagne.

 

And walks after him.

 

Sehun’s walking down the front steps when he catches up to him. The wedding is at a huge, old manor house, and all around them is countryside. The bride and groom are pretty rich, apparently.

 

“Sehun!”

 

He reaches the bottom step and turns, surprised. He’s wearing a coat now and his breath leaves his mouth in little clouds in the cold air.

 

Lu Han gets down the stairs as quickly as he can, which isn’t very quickly, because he’s wearing formal shoes, and not only is the sole slippery, but also very much inflexible.

 

“Hello,” he says, sounding almost cheerful. “Please tell me you’re about to do a massive romance cliché and tell me you love me and don’t ever want to lose me again.”

 

“Well, that might be getting a bit ahead of myself.”

 

“Fair enough.” He folds his arms. “What’s up?”

 

“Er…” _Shit_. He hasn’t planned what he’s going to say.

 

“Did you sort it out, then?” he asks.

 

“Sort what out?”

 

“Your life?”

 

Oh, right. That’s what he’d said to him back then on that day.

 

Lu Han sees why he got angry, but he had needed that time. He needed to come to terms with so many things. That his life isn’t the big romance he always dreamed it’d be. That he probably will always be a little bit average, in many areas of his life. And he’s pretty fucking attracted to boys.

 

That needed a bit of thinking about.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Did you?”

 

Sehun scuffs one foot on the ground. “Well, I got a business apprenticeship.”

 

“That’s so good!”

 

“Yeah… I mean, it’s not that exciting, but… I have a job, at least.”

 

It surprises Lu Han how genuinely relieved he feels to learn that Sehun isn’t jobless.

 

“I should have texted you,” Lu Han says.

 

Sehun raises his eyebrows. “Why didn’t you, then?”

 

“I didn’t know what to say.”

 

“If you’d wanted to talk to me, you would have texted.”

 

“I… don’t think that’s entirely true.”

 

Sehun shakes his head and looks down.

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Lu Han groans. “Look, I really like you, all right? Genuinely. But… I was such a mess at the time, and then bam suddenly it’s like, oh by the way, Lu Han, for your information, turns out you were right; you’re not straight, so you’re going to have to deal with that as well, okay? And I was like, fuck!” Lu Han says the last word slightly too loudly, for emphasis. A couple of people nearby, making their way to their cars, turn around and look at them.

 

“Wow,” says Sehun, grinning. “That is a mess.”

 

“But I’m fine with it now. I mean. I’ve told you that, at that party, I think. I naturally like boys the way I always forced myself to like girls.”

 

He spent night after night googling the word ‘gay’ after that week in August. Watching every YouTube video he could find. Trying to find other people like him.

 

Turns out they’re out there.

 

People like you are always out there.

 

“Anyway… by the time I realized all this, I thought you’d probably have moved on, or… I don’t know. It would have been weird to text you after so long.”

 

Sehun shakes his head. He looks vaguely amazed.

 

“We always seem to find each other,” he said.

 

“That’s so lame.”

 

He laughs. “Shut up.”

 

“It is kind of funny that we keep meeting at parties.”

 

“It’s probably fate.”

 

“Alright, that was cheesy.”

 

“Can we please get together now?” he says.

 

_Get together._

 

The phrase sends a jolt of fear through Lu Han. Only because getting together with people has never ended well for him before.

 

But this is different. Things are different now.

 

“Yeah,” he says.

 

They both lean in for the kiss at exactly the same time, Sehun pulling Lu Han against him by the waist, and Lu Han also has to reach up on tip-toes because Sehun is a lot taller than him. The kiss feels familiar and he gets flashbacks to that one night back then, the best night he’s had this year until now. In a world where everything is bad-to-average, at least there is this. At least there is something good.

 

When they break apart, Sehun looks a bit dazed, and sweeps some hair out of his eyes. “Wow, fucking hell. That was romantic.”

 

“Oh. Lame.”

 

“I used to hate romantic stuff,” he says.

 

“But I’m special?” Lu Han smiles cheekily.

 

“Nope, you’re lame,” he says. “But I can put up with it.”

 

Sehun grabs Lu Han’s hand and links their fingers together. His hands are freezing, and only then does the cold hit him—he’s standing outside, after all, in an arctic weather, in just a thin shirt.

 

“Let’s go back inside for a bit,” Sehun suggests.

 

“You don’t have to leave?”

 

“Nah, I was only leaving because I didn’t have anyone to talk to. But we’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

 

How has it been so long? Is this adult life? Where time skips around, and by the time you think you’ve caught up, it’s suddenly a year later?

 

“Yeah, we do,” Lu Han says, nodding, and Sehun pulls him back up the steps by the hand. “You could meet my friends, as well.”

 

“Hey, what? Did you just say you had friends that aren’t me? I can’t believe this day has come.”

 

“Times have changed, loser.” Lu Han steps closer to him and puts his shoulder under his arm. “I’ve changed.”

 

“Damn, it’s too early for us to be getting that real,” he says. They walk back through the door, the lights of the wedding hall twinkling before them. “Let’s go find some sausage rolls, or something.”

 

“Then we should have a dance. I feel like partying.” Lu Han glances at him. “What do you think?"

 

There’s a sparkle in his eye. “I always feel like partying.”

**Author's Note:**

> so im the biggest happy ending anti but i miss my boys and REALLY didnt have the heart to not grant them one lol


End file.
